MaxedOutMama
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Across The Bay On Edelstein
Across The Bay is an incredibly good blog, and this is an excellent post even by its high standards. Tony is discussing Edelstein's series on Lebanon and its future. He calls Edelstein's last installment "the best thing that's been written about Lebanon's system since it became a hot topic after Hariri's assassination."
In any case, Edelstein's prediction that the center will hold in Lebanon seems more realistic to me than the predictions of civil war by others. There are a lot of reasons for it, but one of the most fundamental is that people want a representative electoral system there and the social and political dynamics of the region are changing rapidly. Furthermore, in order to get the control the people want they must unify against Syria's influence, and nothing generates an urge to compromise within a society as threat from without a society.
Tony writes about Edelstein's fifth installment in the series:
In any case, Edelstein's prediction that the center will hold in Lebanon seems more realistic to me than the predictions of civil war by others. There are a lot of reasons for it, but one of the most fundamental is that people want a representative electoral system there and the social and political dynamics of the region are changing rapidly. Furthermore, in order to get the control the people want they must unify against Syria's influence, and nothing generates an urge to compromise within a society as threat from without a society.
Tony writes about Edelstein's fifth installment in the series:
It's a great antidote to the kind of garbage penned by Helena Cobban and that clown As'ad AbuKhalil (and even some stuff by Juan Cole on Lebanon) which passes as "veteran" analysis or as "expertise." The reason why is that Edelstein starts with the right premise, whereas the others don't. Cobban and AbuKhalil are working with Third Worldist and Arabist models and are stuck in the '70s (viewed through that lens of course).The times, they are a'changing. There seems to be at least a substantial hope that it will be for the better.
